To Be More Than Second Best
by dotion
Summary: The children are missing. Hanzo is losing his grasp on reality. McCree is a welcome rock in the chaos.
1. What A Catch

Hanzo considered himself a strong man, stronger than most. Despite this belief, he couldn't stop the pained grunt that escaped his lips as he launched himself up the side of a residential house gate with a bullet lodged in his hip. What kept him climbing was the harsh slap of his pursuers feet on wet pavement. Rain stapled Hanzo's shaking shoulders, each drop feeling more like nails digging into his exposed skin than water. His kyudo-gi was soaked, sticking to his body uncomfortably from the water and blood that dripped down his leg slowly. Hauling himself over the top of the gate, Hanzo landed awkwardly. Hip screaming, he limped to the houses front door. The men chasing him were close enough that he could hear their excited shouts. The hyenas were zoning in on their weakened zebra. Taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders, Hanzo kicked open the door of the small house.

Stepping inside the house and shutting the door quickly and quietly, Hanzo turned to a warmly bright kitchen. A small family sat at a table, their chopsticks held, frozen, mid-bite or reaching for more food. They stared at Hanzo. Hanzo stared back, unsure of what he expected. Slowly, he moved his hand up to his mouth, holding a finger before his lips in a shushing motion. The family seemed too shocked to even be able to make a noise. Viscous blood slipped down his metal legs from his hip, beginning to create a small puddle in the genkan. Listening intently, Hanzo heard the hyena-like shouts and whoops chase past the house. A sigh of relief left his body as he quietly thanked the storm outside for washing away blood trails he left. Several moments passed in tense silence, the family still staring at him in shock. Clearing his throat, Hanzo turned back to the family.

"Do you have a medical kit?" He asked, his voice tight and gruff with pain. The mother, seemingly snapping out of her shock, put down her chopsticks and nodded, pointing with a shaking hand towards a shut room, presumably the bathroom. Wiping his clawed prosthetics on the entryway mat as best he could, Hanzo limped through the kitchen and into the indicated room.

Rifling through the cabinet in the small bathroom, Hanzo found the medical kit. He slipped his kyudo-gi off his shoulder and lowered it below his hip. Without tweezers, he would be unable to remove the bullet. Worryingly he didn't believe he could remove it anyway, his vision was swimming. The best he could do with the items in the kit was to put a few butterfly stitch band-aids over the hole and bandage it with a soft cloth. Hanzo sat for a moment in an attempt to clear his vision. If the family were smart, they would have called the police by now. Time was running out. Yet, there was nowhere else for Hanzo to go. A zebra separated from the herd, hyenas circling outside, Hanzo had run into the lion's den.

A memory of last year at Hanamura racked itself through Hanzo's mind. A flash of silver, the afterimage of green neon lights, and an offer of forgiveness. There was one place Hanzo could go. Halfway across the world, Genji waited. Several months after Hanamura a letter had appeared in Hanzo's small hotel room. It stated merely an address and bore a drawing of a sparrow. Hanzo knew what it meant. An invitation to an old and abandon Overwatch base could hardly be misinterpreted. Despite the knowledge that the path to redemption lay in Gibraltar, Hanzo had procrastinated the journey for months more. He regretted it now. Once more his pride had gotten in the way, fighting that giving in to the urge to return to his brother's side was admitting defeat, and admitting that all the work he had done to avenge Genji's death over the years had been for nothing. Once more the debate roared in his head. Hanzo found himself wishing for the dragons guidance in the matter.

They had not spoken to him outside of battle since Genji's not-death. Sorrow and guilt flooded over his body, shame for yearning for something he no longer deserved and grief for the memories of his spirit companions. It was during this hurried introspection that he heard it. In the back of his mind, almost drowned by the storm outside and in his head, a small voice whispered. Go, it said. It was enough to have Hanzo jerking upright, his head swimming with dizziness. The low voice was enough to make Hanzo's mind up for him. It was time to return to Genji and to redeem himself. Sirens echoing outside shocked Hanzo back to the present, and back to the cold bathroom he sat in. With nothing but his bow, a few arrows, and the wet clothes sticking to his back, Hanzo leaped out the bathroom window and began his road to redemption.

The day was hot and the sun high in the sky when Hanzo landed on Gibraltar. The humidity rose as he made the journey to the remote mountain outcrop that housed the base. Not wanting to risk being followed and compromising his brother's new home, Hanzo committed himself to avoid main roads. Eventually, this led him to have to scale the sheer side of a mountain. His hands bled slowly as his skin ripped on the sharp rocks, and his hip ached with the memory of his bullet wound. His body was dirty, and his hair was greasy after several days on a small boat to the watchpoint. His skin itched at the dirt as he pulled himself over the edge of the mountain. Before him, tucked into the side of the mountain, lay a vast compound. Glancing up and shielding his eyes from the bright sun, Hanzo caught a glimpse of someone gazing down at him from the top of a building. A blink and the figure was gone. Apprehension curled itself into Hanzo's gut. Scanning the surroundings, he could see no one else. Another blink and there was something cold and terrifyingly gun shaped pressed to his temple.

Turning around slowly and raising his empty hands to the sky, Hanzo managed to get an awkward view of the person holding him at gunpoint. It was a small woman, skinny and short. Orange tinted goggles covered her eyes and spiky brown hair framed her little face. Upon her face sat a small but pronounced button nose, sprinkled with freckles, and thin pink lips. Her outfit was strange, with a machine strapped to her chest and tight orange leggings. Hanzo felt his eyebrows raising as he stared at her, it was nearly impossible to sneak up on him. It was possible the machine was to blame, but Hanzo still didn't like it.

"Hiya, love! Pardon me, but I don't believe I know you, and this building is strictly off-limits to strangers!" A cheery voice accented smoothly with a British accent interrupted Hanzo's speculation. Focusing back on the woman's face, he was met with an expression far too severe for the happy tone of voice she was using. Hanzo moved his hand slowly, down to the pocket he sewed into his kyudo-gi when he started his journey. The woman's eyes tracked his hand, her trigger finger tensing slowly as two of his fingers dipped into the pocket. Hanzo kept his movements deliberate, slow, and easy to follow. Pulling out the small, crumpled manila paper that Genji had left him so many months ago. The scrawled address bared for the woman to see, Hanzo slowly held it out for her.

"I believe I was invited," He murmured. The sudden voice seemed to startle the woman slightly, but thankfully her trigger finger stayed relaxed. She confiscated the paper from him, looking it over quickly. Narrowing her eyes towards him, then looking back at the article, then again at him, she slowly lowered the gun.

"Names Tracer, love. Nice to meet ya," the woman, Tracer, offered a small salute. "Pardon again, but I'm gonna have to escort you further into the watchpoint 'ere so I can get a second opinion." Hanzo felt the gun against the small of his back as she began to lead him towards the buildings. The pressure of the gun so near his injured hip made Hanzo want to groan, the pain of the bullet wound welling up once more. The scrapes on his hands had stopped bleeding by now, thankfully, so he could hide the injury for now. Trying his best not to limp and succeeding greatly due to the constant training to show no weakness he faced as a child, Hanzo followed the continual pressure of the gun into one of the buildings and to a small reception-like area, just without the receptionist.

Tracer murmured something cheerfully into an earpiece, turning back to Hanzo shortly after. "Alright, then! Calvaries on their way now! Won't be long," she tittered. The small woman was so full of energy it made Hanzo tired as if she was sapping his to add to her endless supply. His fingers itched to remove his bow from where it lay strapped to his back, but he knew that would be perceived as a threat. Instead, he settled on observing his surroundings.

The heat and humidity from outside seemed to have followed them in, and Hanzo could see no air conditioners in the small space they occupied. The moisture pressed in on his skin, and he had a hard time catching his breath. Hanzo focused his face and body posture into one that was complete neutrality, hiding his failing breath and apprehension. Sweat was pooling on his skin and dripping slowly into his eyes, and his head swam slowly. The room they were in was surrounded by large windows, letting the too bright sunlight into the space. Cobwebs and dust covered nearly every surface, signs of disuse. It disgusted Hanzo, and he couldn't stop his lip from curling at the sight.

The sounds of footsteps shook him out of his thoughts. He turned to face a whole mass of people walking towards him. Tracer really wasn't joking when she said the cavalry was coming. An afterimage of blue glow stained Hanzo's eyes, and suddenly Tracer was among those walking towards him, chattering to a...a gorilla? Perhaps Hanzo really was overheated. Despite his shock, Hanzo schooled his expression back into neutrality, meeting the group strongly. The urge to arm himself grew when he spotted the many guns that decorated the people's bodies.

When the group reached him, they stopped. Hanzo felt himself being appraised, judged, and sentenced. Hanzo stared back, holding his head high as his pride refused to back down. The silence stretched for several long moments. The tension in the room grew along with the quiet, crackling like the dragons before they struck. Breaking the silence were soft, metallic footsteps pushing through the small crowd. A silver, masked head stuck itself out from between the gorilla and a blonde woman who Hanzo recognized as Angela Ziegler, a world-class medic of former Overwatch. Hanzo felt his heavy breath still in his lungs at the sight of the masked man, silver metal shining almost as brightly as the neon green vents that spotted his body. Genji strode up to Hanzo quietly, meeting his stare behind a visor.

"Brother," He said, his voice so familiar and yet so foreign, the overlay of robotic tone a harsh reminder of what had become of him. "I believed you would not come." His voice pitched up as the sentence concluded, a teasing tone of voice he used to use when discussing Hanzo's rare outings or lovers. "I am glad you did," Genji concluded warmly. Hanzo felt his shoulders relaxing at his brother's words, despite the constant flashes of his brother's bloody face that smattered themselves against his eyelids when he blinked.

"Now hold on," A voice drawled from the corner of the group. A man leaned there, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a blanket on his shoulders. Hanzo blinked a few times, his head swimming once more, but the assless chaps and spurred boots remained no matter how many times he tried to blink them away. First a disappearing woman, then a gorilla, and now an honest to god cowman. "Did ya say brother there, Genji? 'Cause correct me if I'm wrong, but the last I heard your brother there's the one who laid you open all those years ago. Now I ain't the sharpest saw in the shed, and I haven't seen ya since ya were knee-high to a grasshopper, but a man who does that seems a few bricks shy o' a load, and I don't feel too great about lettin' him in here," The man continued.

Hanzo blanked. Had any of what the cowman just said been English? He felt like he was back in his elders first English lesson, grasping at straws for a meaning behind gibberish. He felt his jaw open slightly, his cool facade failing for a few moments as he tried to process the complicated idioms the man had used. Based on the ending, he was sure it wasn't in his favor.

Genji turned to the cowman, a somber demeanor taking over his body. The air chilled for a moment, and Hanzo swayed. Thankfully most of the attention was now on his brother and the cowman, and his lack of balance went unnoticed.

"I have forgiven my brother, Jesse, but he has yet to forgive himself," Genji started, his tone reflective and confident. "He is an excellent strategist and marksman, and I believe his skills could be needed here while we work on our relationship." A moment lapsed between speaking as if Genji were taking a silent breath. Hanzo was unused to these words coming from his brother; he had been half expecting his old, flamboyant brother to arise from the dead, but Hanzo saw the foolishness in this hope now. "I hope that you all, too, will find it within your hearts to accept him," Genji reached up and unclasped his mask, and Hanzo looked away in shame. It took a moment before he could force himself to look back at Genji, who had turned to address the whole group. "He has made many mistakes." His gaze hardened, "However everyone deserves a second chance."

The cowman, Jesse, looked away from Genji at that. He chose instead to look Hanzo over and then seemed to take notice of Hanzo's gentle swaying. He raised a bushy eyebrow but said nothing. Hanzo could hear another deep voice talking now, and then Tracer's cheery one cutting in. A melodic female voice also added, angry sounding. Hanzo paid no attention to the conversation on his worthiness. Genji wanted him here, the dragons wanted him here for all their one word spoken in over 10 years. He had no doubts that he would be allowed to stay, even if it were in a cell. Instead of listening to the argument that was slowly developing, Hanzo chose to gaze back at the cowman, meeting his eyes unwaveringly.

The heat in the room was constantly giving out to chills, and Hanzo could no longer feel the sweat that used to decorate his body. His head swirled, but he kept his footing. Something was running down his thigh, and when he looked down, he saw that it was blood. Climbing the mountain had probably ripped open his poorly healed bullet wound. When he refocused his gaze on Jesse, he could tell the man had noticed the blood too, but still, he said nothing. For that Hanzo was grateful.

Eventually, Hanzo was forced to tune back into the conversation when he heard his name being called. Genji's scarred face was looking his way, along with the faces of the other current members of the room. Doctor Ziegler wore resentment, but the gorilla and Tracer seemed to hold a cautious hopefulness in their eyes. The other occupants of the room, a giant man with no eye, a dark-skinned woman with an interesting tattoo under her eye, a young girl with pink triangles on her face, and a dreadlocked man who wore neon colors, all seemed to look at him with reservation and thinly veiled dislike painting their expressions.

"Hanzo? Did you hear me?" Genji asked softly, finally taking notice of his brother's paleness and gentle swaying. "I said they have agreed to let you stay as a provisional member of Overwatch, but you must be under guard at all times until they can trust you." He continued, and Hanzo nodded absently, the words not really sinking in. Genji thought it must have been what talking to younger him must have been like, in one ear and out the other. "Brother? Are you alright?" He asked, and Hanzo simply stared at him.

"I think," Hanzo started, his voice more uncertain than he expected. "I may have torn open an old wound. If you would-" He paused for a breath, the room seeming suffocating and the light far too bright. Why was the light so bright? Someone should turn it down. Heat pressed in on Hanzo, and he swayed dangerously. "If you would lead me to your nearest medical kit, I would like to redress it." He mumbled, unknowingly switching back to Japanese halfway through his sentence. As another cold shiver ran through his body, the world shifted. It was so bright. Was Genji always so fuzzy? He could hear Genji speaking, but he couldn't understand. It was cold, all of a sudden. The world was tilting so much he couldn't tell why. Then suddenly, everything went out. His vision went black, and he felt himself falling. He could feel someone catch him, but he wasn't sure who. The last thing he heard before he succumbed to the darkness was a gentle whisper, proud and strong, in the back of his mind. Rest now, young master. You have arrived.


	2. Drain

The first time that Jesse McCree laid eyes upon Hanzo Shimada, he thought he was going insane.

Hanzo Shimada, heir of the Shimada throne, missing for ten years, suspected mercenary, and Genji Shimada's older brother, was supposed to be a monster. He was supposed to be a grey-skinned, white-eyed, heaving demon with red horns and a gaping maw. Hell, McCree was expecting a skinwalker, someone or something that would slay his own brother horrifically.

The one thing Jesse McCree was not expecting was a 5 foot* something, heavily muscled, very attractive man. If Jesse looked hard enough, he could see the resemblance between Hanzo and Genji. Memories of kind-of-fucked-up eyebrows, strong brow bones, and angry eyes flooded his memory. However, Hanzo was clearly older. His handsome face was marred by deep-set wrinkles and worry lines. His mouth was set in a firm line that seemed permanent. That paired with darting, suspicious eyes, and drawn eyebrows placed his expression somewhere between cool and a pained grimace.

Despite Genji's reassurances, Jesse couldn't help but dislike the man before him. This man was suspected to be responsible for hundreds of assassinations over the years. Political powerhouses, gang leaders, and Shimada elders, all were supposedly felled by the man the man before him. He seemed to have no allegiance to any political party, gang, or person. Jesse knew what it was like to go wherever the money led, but he at least let his moral compass guide him. Each detail about Hanzo that Jesse remembered fueled his distrust of the man. He had skill, yes. Overwatch could use that, but Jesse didn't trust Hanzo to remain by their side when a better, better paying job came along. Hanzo probably had an arrow for every recalled member in the quiver that was slowly slipping off his shoulder.

Hanzo swayed suddenly, and McCree raised an eyebrow. Looking closer, the man was very pale. His lips weren't then, they were extremely white and blended into Hanzo's skin. He also seemed to be shaking, and his eyes didn't seem to be focusing on anything in particular. Looking closer he could see a dark, sluggish stream of blood slowly tracking its way down the man's body and puddling on the floor. McCree met Hanzo's eyes, his question held in his eyes.

He turned to the group of other Overwatch members arguing beside him, but his attempt to inform them of their guest's predicament went unnoticed as they argued. McCree didn't support the decision they reached, to let Hanzo in, but at least he would be under guard.

When Hanzo finally spoke, his voice was wavering, thready, and strained. The mention of a medpack reminded McCree of the blood he had witnessed just moments ago. When Hanzo fell, McCree let him fall. Genji leaped forward, catching the heavy looking man in his metal arms.

"Brother?" Genji asked, his metallic voice filled with confusion. He released Hanzo gently down onto the floor, coming away with silver arms stained red. McCree stepped forward, leaning down and trying to find the source of the bleeding. It seemed to be coming from his hip. McCree lowered the waistband of the weird tit-out romper the man was wearing, revealing a mess of hastily tied gauze bandages wrapped loosely around a small wound held barely closed with common butterfly stitches. Blood was pumping steadily out of the torn flesh, soaking the bandages and Hanzo's romper-thing.

McCree felt a nudge at his shoulder, and he moved to allow Angie better access to the unconscious man. She felt his forehead, sighing at the fever she found there.

"I'll have to bring him to my lab, he has an infection," She motioned for Genji to lift Hanzo up and carry him after her. "I guess there'll be no guard for the moment," She turned to the other members with a tired wink "A moment to enjoy some peace and quiet," Turning back around to lead the way to her small lab, she sighed. "Probably just a moment, though."

…

Hanzo awoke to a very pleasant warm feeling. Peeling open his eyes, his pupils were hit with a golden, shimmering light covering his hip. The golden light trailed from his hip where he was shot through his veins. Strange places in his body seemed to glow, the area where his spleen, chest, stomach, and intestines lay seemed particularly bright. His skin was shimmering lightly like there was a thin mask of nanites covering his entire body.

"Your immune system was compromised."

Hanzo looked to the left, seeing Ziegler sitting at a small desk cluttered with papers. How old-fashioned. She was scratching away at a notebook with a bitten pencil, not facing him. A monitor before her displayed his vitals, the screen refreshing every few seconds. Looking down to the foot of his cot Hanzo spotted a strange staff, the tip open and rotating around a stream of gold nanites that fueled the glow around his body.

"I have you hooked up to my staff. You will be fine," The doctor turned to face him, a cold expression on her face. Her baby blue eyes were dark with hatred. "I promised Genji I would care for you, and I am bound by my oath, but I will not waste unnecessary resources on you."

Hanzo absorbed her words solemnly, opening his mouth to respond. His mouth was dry and tacky, and he swallowed before speaking. Doctor Ziegler took his pause to continue speaking, her expression pinching and reddening every moment.

"I was the one who stitched Genji back together. I was the one that found him," Her voice was softly accented and mean, words annunciated with clinical precision. "I know exactly what you did to him; every cut, scrape, gauge, and burn. He may have forgiven you, but I will never trust you. If you even think about betraying Overwatch, I will cut you open and take everything you took from him."

Hanzo raised his eyebrows. The woman was straight to the point. Her mention of what he did to Genji made his stomach knot and his head swim with gruesome images, and he felt like throwing up.

"I understand, Dr. Ziegler. I ensure you I will attempt not to bother you or be a drain on your resources. I can not promise I will never fail Overwatch, but I plan to give your organization all I have," He mumbled, his throat rumbling with the strain of speaking after what was probably a long sleep.

The doctor seemed surprised by this. She nodded briefly at him before standing and click-clacking her way over to the staff at his feet. She fiddled with some settings, reading something he could not see. The light stream it provided switched off, and the pleasant feeling it provided disappeared with it. Hanzo immediately missed it.

"You had a poorly treated bullet wound located in your right iliacus muscle," She pointed to his hip where the bullet had dug in. "It was infected for a while, and compromised your immune system." That explained the strange glowing areas on his body. "I have applied healing nanites, and you should be fine now. Because it was so small, you should not have any downtime."

Hanzo barely listened as she raddled off what she had done, what injuries she had found on his body, and chose instead to slowly flex his prosthetics. They were still on. Strange, but appreciated. He glanced at the doctor, who seemed to notice his curiosity at his metal legs and feet being intact. She sighed and brought over her notebook, showing him pages of notes about him; his blood type, birth date, name, age, and many more pages of medical nonsense including his prosthetics and reactions to nanites.

"I took the 15 hours you were asleep to perform a cursory medical base test on you, so as to not waste time and resources." She tapped her notebook thoughtfully, her eyes glancing over the neatly written notes. "As far as your physical health, you're good as new. Mentally though, there's no prescription to treat what you have."

She walked back to her desk, where the monitor no longer displayed his vitals. "You've been discharged, but remember Shimada; I've got my eye on you."

A few minutes of stiff silence and a comm call later, a small girl in an oversized sweatshirt walked through the lab doors. She was Korean, and couldn't be older than 18. Hanzo had to struggle to hide his surprise at his new guard. She seemed to notice this, striding forward with stick straight posture. She paused before him, eyeing him up and down judgmentally.

"안녕! Agent reporting for duty!" She said cheerfully. The Korean greeting seemed much too informal and happy for her judging eyes and pouty mouth. "I got stuck with your guard duty until lunch, how unfair!" She continued, turning to lead the way out of the lab.

"Hello," Hanzo finally snapped out of his shock to respond gruffly. His pride wouldn't let him apologize to the young girl for existing. If she was so upset about performing her duty, perhaps she should not be in the ranks of Overwatch. She was so young, too. Certainly, she was too young to go on missions, let alone enter battle. Hanzo thought back to his training as a young boy. He could fight before he could speak. Perhaps she was raised like that, too. A heavy sadness covered his heart at the thought of this girl, , fighting so young. He was also slightly appalled that Overwatch would allow this. Surely they had sense enough to recognize her age and to pull her out of combat. Perhaps she was only an on-base asset, set to tasks such as cleaning, cooking, or polishing armor like the servants at Shimada castle. There was also the chance that she was merely a ward, under the protection of Overwatch from a family like the Shimada that would force her into a life of combat and anger.

His thoughts stopped when he nearly ran into the girl. He didn't notice when she stopped. turned to him, pointing at the door next to them.

"This is your room. Your stuff's already inside, so just chill in there until lunch. There's a bathroom and whatever. I'll be outside this door the whole time, so don't try anything!" Her voice was so high and young it strained Hanzo's ears, especially when she raised her voice to a near yell. "Athena'll know if you're up to no good, too." Hanzo had no idea who Athena was. "Oh, and I don't know what happened with you and Genji, but you're apparently not a good guy. Prove them wrong, and you've got my trust." ushered him into the room, slipping out a small gaming console from the big pocket of her hoodie. " signing off." The door slid shut in Hanzo's face.

The room was empty. There was a single sized bed, a small dresser with three drawers, and a door in the corner. The bed's sheets were white, the dresser was black, and the door was white.

Opening the door revealed an equally empty bathroom, with a shower stall covered by a white curtain, a stark white toilet, and a white sink with a mirror over it. The tiles, however, were black. Probably, surmised Hanzo, to hide the grime. The thought sent him grimacing and his skin crawling. He'd have to clean it thoroughly if he were to use it. The bed sheets, too.

Walking back into the main room Hanzo noticed his bags set haphazardly in the corner next to the bed. Well, bag. Stormbow was leaning against the wall, his arrows resting next to it. Hanzo had bought a small, cross-body backpack to keep his few possessions when he crossed through South Korea. Inside it, he had packed his citizen clothes, a hairbrush, a toothbrush, and other miscellaneous items he used to keep up his appearance. This bag was laying near his bow and quiver, knocked over with a few of its contents spilling out.

With a sigh, Hanzo walked over to correct it. He was shoving everything back in when he noticed something strange. A wisp of smoke clung to the back of his hand for a moment, impossible in its blackness, before dissipating into nothing. The back of his neck prickled like someone was watching him. Hanzo turned slowly but was stopped a quarter of the way by a clawed hand gripping the back of his throat. The hand shoved his head into the wall in front of him before he could react, cutting off any noise he would have made with a wave of dizziness. A second clawed hand wrapped around to cover his mouth, ensuring his silence. After a moment of wavering nausea, he felt a presence lean into the curve of his spine.

Acrid, rotting breath reached his face as the monster spoke, its voice sounding like burnt coal rumbling over itself, gruff and painful.

"You made the wrong decision, Shimada. We intend to correct it," the voice rattled in his ear.

Again his head was slammed against the wall, and the presence at his back drew away, leaving him to crash to the floor in a disoriented heap. His head stopped spinning moments later, and he whirled to face the intruder. Anyone who could surprise a Shimada, let alone Hanzo himself, was a force far greater than the normal man. However, when Hanzo turned, the room was just as barren as before.

The door burst open at that moment, and the small girl from before entered with a small pistol gripped expertly between her hands. She scanned the room, spotting him in the corner next to his bag. A confused look crossed her face in a moment, her pistol dropping as she muttered: "Clear!". She looked around another moment before swinging the bathroom door open. Again she searched and mumbled to herself. Re-entering the room, she stared back at him. For a moment there was silence. It was tense, uncomfortable. They maintained eye contact, Hanzo keeping his face neutral and her face clear distrust.

"I heard two large crashes. Care to explain what happened?" She asked, her high voice more serious than he had heard it so far. She crossed her thin arms over her chest, her hip cocking out to the side like a disappointed mom. Or a pouting child.

Hanzo thought for a moment. He remembered what happened, but it couldn't have happened. A phantom, attacking him and threatening him, only to disappear a moment later? Unlikely. More likely he was disassociating or hallucinating, or finally going insane. Perhaps it was all three at once. Still, it was concerning. His head hurt, so he definitely had fallen. Something in the back of his mind reminded him that if electric spirit dragons that lived in the flesh of a chosen host could exist, then anything was possible. The chance of that being true, however, were so slim that Hanzo discounted it almost immediately. He had never in his long life come across supernatural powers like the Shimada dragons.

Realizing he was taking too long to respond, Hanzo glanced up at Agent .

"I tripped, Agent . I apologize for the fear it might have caused," He finally choked out of his tangled thoughts. "My prosthetics, I have kept them on too long and now they are less responsive. I must remove them for maintenance to fix the issue."

Hanzo pointed to his silver legs. It was true, he had kept them on too long. It was possible that Doctor Ziegler removed them during her testing and note taking, but Agent didn't know that. He sat on the bed, the old frame creaking quietly under the sudden weight. looked over the room once more, then back to Hanzo where he sat. She glanced at his legs, then back to his face. Turning away with a heavy sigh she sauntered back towards the exit of his room.

"To be honest, I thought those were boots," She threw at him in a teasing tone. "Lunch is soon, and I'm ready to go to chow town. So hurry up with those repairs and then I-er, we can go eat!" The door slid shut behind her once more.

The moment her form was hidden from Hanzo's view he relaxed greatly. Removing his prosthetics was a process he didn't like to perform in front of people. He unclasped the connector circuits, pressed in the three buttons surrounding the base, and twisted his leg. It groaned slightly but released with a hiss of steam. Repeating the process for the other leg, Hanzo almost moaned as his stumps were freed from the steel prisons. He massaged the stumps for a moment. They were red but seemed unbothered by long wear. Perhaps Ziegler had removed them during her examination.

Allowing himself a moment reprieve he sat, leaning against the wall his bed was pressed against. Closing his eyes, he reached out for the dragons once more.

Please... He tried, calling out for his guides. I don't know what to do. I think I am falling into something I can not control. He remembered Ziegler's words from earlier. "Mentally though, there's no prescription to treat what you have." Maybe he was really going insane. Was that was Ziegler was referencing? Perhaps. Please, tell me if I am on the right path. Tell me if I am slipping, I need guidance. He begged the dragons, pleading for them to answer. They didn't. He was interrupted by pounding on the door.

"Let's go! I don't want to be late for lunch!" She called, prompting Hanzo to slip his prosthetics back on, clicking into place and refitting the connectors. He stood and walked to the door, preparing himself to face the world once more. The snake in his gut at his dragons refusal to speak wound itself tight, squeezing and coiling in the familiar feeling of uneasiness. Once more he felt as if he were five years old, sitting in his clan gi before his dragons for the first time. Fear, apprehension, and the feeling of being lost.

The door slid open, revealing impatiently staring at the opposite wall. When she noticed him, she perked up and started to lead the way down the hall, chattering about the food and other members, something about high scores and competitions, but Hanzo wasn't listening. He was too focused on his refusal. Perhaps the dragons hadn't responded, because he really had gone insane. Perhaps, they couldn't reach through the fog of his mind any longer. The image of his dragons clawing angrily through his mind, reaching out but only getting pushed farther away, surfaced in his mind. It scared him. However, the thought of his mighty spirit guides screaming at him, their words silenced and throats clogged by mist, trying to warn him away from his path, that terrified him.


	3. Mundane

Lunch was a boring affair. As difficult as it was to eat while being stared at by 90% of the people in the room, it would have been even harder not to eat with the sudden realization of the hunger working its way through his body. The food, some german dish made of some kind of thick noodle covered in butter and herbs, tasted good enough and distracted Hanzo enough to let him get through the meal.

Conversation was low and limited, the members of Overwatch wary of his presence at the table. Hanzo had been told to sit next to Agent at the end of the table, as far away from the other members as possible. Eventually the team seemed to realize that his mind was wondering, and conversation picked up outside of pleasantries.

"I heard a rumor today about the Reaper," McCree murmured, poking at his butter noodles absently.

Hanzo slowly zoned back into the conversation at the mention of that name. It was a name he heard often in the darker corners of the earth. He was an assassin, and like Hanzo he was good, but much sloppier. When Hanzo took hits he left only one body, one arrow, one person's blood. The Reaper left endless gore, blood spattered walls, and masses of bodies. Recently the amount of requests asking for someone of the Reapers caliber were decreasing. There had been no reports of his attacks for months, leaving many to think he had finally met someone better.

"Said he'd been pokin' around out by San Jose. Found a whole gas station ruined. Poor soul who was workin' the counter got turned damn near inside out." McCree continued while the others around the table grumbled and shifted warily. "Thing is, they can't find one a' the other bodies. Security shows a whole lotta people in that station, ya know? Cops found a whole lotta blood, whole lotta people, but not everyone. This little girl, Sofía Rivera, ran away from home a few months ago. Whole lotta kids do, roun' those parts. Th' footage caught her right in that little gas station. Wrong place, wrong time I suppose. But they can't find that little girls body." McCree tightened his grip on his fork, his mouth pressed in a hard line. Shadows fell over his face from his hair and hat, and the table fell into silence. A few of the members were looking at their food, their laps, or glancing at each other.

Agent stood and placed her dish in the sink, leaving promptly. Hanzo looked up at that, shifting uncomfortably after realizing his 'guard' had just left him. Doctor Ziegler was the first to speak as other members slowly followed Agent out.

"Jesse, we can't be certain these disappearances are related," She began, her voice gentle and her words halting as if carefully chosen.

"They are, Angie. I know they are. Ya can't say they aren't." McCree's voice slowly got angrier the more he rambled on, his grip on his fork tightening until his knuckles went white.

"We don't have the manpower for a mission of that caliber yet, Jesse! You-" Doctor Ziegler tried again to calm McCree.

"It don't matter! There are children out there and they're gone! It don't matter how many people are here, Angie! We got to help-" McCree's voice rose before he seemed to remember Hanzo's presence in the room. He huffed loudly, standing roughly and taking his and Hanzo's dishes to the sink before stalking out, grabbing Hanzo by his arm and pulling him along with him.

Hanzo stumbled out of his chair and had to jog to keep up, the grip on his arm bruising. McCree brought him straight to his room, shoving him inside and then closing the door behind him. Hanzo could hear the man punch the wall across the hall several times.

Remembering the events previous his trip to lunch, Hanzo warily looked around his room. Nothing seemed out of place. Even the dust that covered the room seemed undisturbed. He stepped backwards slowly until his knees hit his bed and he sat.

Mulling over the conversation in the kitchen brought troubling thoughts to Hanzo. It pushed away his worries of the dragons for a moment. Apparently the Reaper had been in San Jose, New Mexico this whole time. Hanzo was almost glad he wasn't dead. More supply meant that his absence from his previous profession would be noticed less, and less people would come looking.

He regretted these thoughts almost immediately when he remembered the missing children Agent McCree had mentioned. It was uncommon for agents such as the Reaper or Hanzo to sign with any one organization. Uncommon, but not unheard of. The thought of such a reckless, bloodthirsty creature rounding up children for some unknown purpose sent shivers down Hanzo's spine.

A harsh, low laugh curled through Hanzo's thoughts, filling the silence of his room and covering McCree's muffled anger outside his door. Snapping his spine straight and leaping to his feet, Hanzo had stormbow in his hands in less than a second. No one was in his room. Eyes flicking wildly back and forth, Hanzo circled silently, looking for the source of the laugh. There was nothing but dust and shadows cast by the ever lowering sun.

The room was humid, Hanzo noticed. Slightly more humid than when he had entered the room. Slowly, Hanzo raised his eyes to the window nestled in the corner of his room above his bed. It was open ever so slightly, just a sliver. It hadn't been open at all when he had been shoved into the room by Agent McCree. Adrenaline pulsed inside of Hanzo's veins. The laugh returned, slightly louder. It surrounded him. His vision was starting to dim and he tensed his fingers on his bowstring. Hanzo didn't feel sick, he didn't feel like he had a fever or overwhelmed, so why was his vision so dark? The laughter grew and grew, louder and louder until it was all Hanzo could hear, filling every sense as the darkness multiplied until it was the deepest color Hanzo had ever seen, and the world swirled into nothingness all at once and Hanzo felt his stance stagger.

The door wished open. The world was light again. The window snapped shut across the room. McCree's hand was back on his arm, the man not looking at Hanzo, not noticing the smaller mans disorientation or the bow held so tightly, nocked and drawn, in his hands. Stormbow clattered to the ground, loud in the sudden silence.

"I'm goin' to the range, and yer gonna come cuz ya gotta," McCree rumbled, pulling Hanzo along behind him. Hanzo stared back into his room as he was dragged along, an empty, dusty, shadowy room. The door slipped shut with a sharp click behind them.

…

Sitting in the corner of the practice range, staring at Agent McCree as he fired round after round into the practice bots. The jarring change from his own descent into apparent insanity to such a normal, repetitive activity left Hanzo feeling hollow. Perhaps he was wrong about the dragons being the only supernatural force. He had never believed in ghosts before, per say, he knew there were spirits and he knew they could be extremely powerful, but he had never really believed they remained after death. Still, the rapid appearance and disappearance of a presence apparently through a tiny sliver of open window left little room for doubt in the paranormal forces.

The pop of Agent McCree's gun ripped Hanzo from his spiralling thoughts. Without his dragons to guide him in his thoughts was a noticeable loss. Hanzo was unused to becoming so wrapped up in his own mind alone. The gun barked again and again, sending the omnic bots spiralling and sparking. For an organization attempting so hard to spread omnic positivity, they sure did enslave a lot.

At first McCree's aim had been laughably bad, but as the man had calmed down it became better and better until he only missed by hair lengths at a time. The more time that went on, the more Hanzo questioned the events in his room really happened, and the more his hands itched for a bow to practice himself.

The steady, rhythmic blasts from McCree's guns slowed to a halt, and Hanzo looked over the the man to see him staring over at him. The cowboy turned and walked directly into a wall. The wall opened, though. McCree emerged from the wall a few seconds later, letting the hidden door slide shut behind him. The automatic doors in this base were going to give Hanzo a heart attack one day.

McCree threw something at Hanzo and he caught it deftly, feeling the familiar weight of a training bow. A quiver of arrows followed, the arrows pointed with weights and holographic heads, so as to give the illusion of power.

"I need to practice on something that moves like a real human being," McCree muttered, fiddling with a control panel on the wall. Hanzo stood, his fingers flexing on the grip of the metal bow. A small smile crawled across his face. Finally, something to distract him from his thoughts.

"It won't be practice, Agent McCree. It'll be training." Hanzo responded, his voice strong and deep, surprising himself. "There is a difference."

McCree turned, his own wolfish smile plastered over his face. The room started to melt behind him, the hologram of a snowy watchpoint covering over the training room like a second skin.

"Battle. Agent McCree v.s.." Athena's professional voice echoed through the arctic air, pausing before addressing Hanzo. "...Guest Shimada." Hanzo stared at the doors that had formed before him, rolling his shoulders in the simulated cold. His breath puffed in frozen clouds before his face, his metal feet flexing in creaking snow. "Athena's voice echoed once more. The doors opened.

…

His skin was stinging from the frigid air. Hanzo had forgotten what it was like for the air to hurt. It reminded him of his first trip to Hokkaido as a child under his father's guidance. It had been a short adventure, a 3 hour plane ride and a short drive through the countryside to a remote warehouse to oversee the production of Talimogene Laherparepvec. It was a drug formerly thought of as the cure to melanoma, but slowly degraded into a psychedelic that left the user elated and drooling for days. The warehouse had been unheated, yet his father had insisted on wearing their traditional clothing, as lightweight as it was. Wind had blown right through Hanzo's layers and left him shivering lightly. His father had not been impressed.

"You must never show such weakness, Hanzo. A dragon is never swayed by the wind, he must command it." His father had said, his voice emotionless and stiff. Sojiro talked almost akin to a low grade omnic: stilted, loud, and flat. His face followed the same path. He betrayed nothing, even as he cut down his enemies. The deadness of his eyes was disconcerting even to Hanzo, who had stared up into those eyes in wonder for his entire life. Hanzo had hung off of every word his father offered him, and year after year he too lost his humanity.

Hanzo did not shiver. He let out a slow breath, watching the frozen cloud dissipate into the snow filled world beyond. Crouching atop a thick beam on the signal tower, he studied the ground below. A slip of red in the corner of his eye distracted him from his memories as he snapped his head to zero in on the already gone flicker of color. He knocked an arrow, the tip fat and cold to mimic his sonic arrows. After a few rounds Athena had reprogrammed a few settings on the arrows to create the illusion of those he made. Aiming slowly as to not make any noise, an idea betrayed by the quiet creaking of the bow string, he released the arrow into the wall the color had disappeared behind. His eyes twitched and cramped painfully for a moment while the arrow connected with the implants that let him observe heat signatures detected by the arrow. Agent McCree was crouching against the wall, moving slowly towards the other exit. Hanzo knocked another arrow.

Agent McCree burst out of the opening already aiming for Hanzo. Hanzo had already fired the shot. McCree rolled. Hanzo's shot landed squarely between his shoulder blades. McCree's gun had gone off a moment after he revealed himself, barking loudly in the swallowing cold. He felt it hit his gut as real as an actual shot, and shot himself off the signal tower immediately. Located McCree again was easy, the man had righted himself but not retreated, his gun tracking Hanzo a fraction of a second behind. The shot wasn't right. Calling for the dragons was habitual, the small use of their power to fire off rapid shots fast as light. The dragons did not answer him. He loosed his shot anyway. They had refused to answer him the entire training time, a mildly concerning thought pushed down by his lazer focus on his target. McCree had rolled again, catching this arrow in his leg and missing his own shot. Hanzo was off again to higher ground, climbing up sheer metal, his prosthetics digging into the surface easily and propelling him upwards. Jumping off the wall and pulling his bowstring tight, he felt the arrows cheap plastic feathers glancing his cheek. Messy. The shot fired directly into McCree's head. McCree's shot landed directly between Hanzo's eyes. They felt nothing but frustration.

With a glowing fade, the simulation melted away, leaving Hanzo with his slightly modified arrows and McCree with his revolver standing feet away from each other and panting. Warm air filtered between them, a sharp contrast to their red noses, fingers, and in Hanzo's case, extremely hard nipple. The men said nothing for a while, both content to come back down to the real world at their own pace. Hanzo felt the world slowly break through the fog in his mind, the focus beat into him from years of harsh training fracturing and leaving him with a vague sense of paranoia and uncomfortableness.

"You fought well," Hanzo began, smirking when he saw Agent McCree's eyebrows raise slightly. "But not well enough."

The cowboy spluttered, his cheeks turning red at the insult. He reached to punch at Hanzo's shoulder casually, like it was a habit, a gesture he used with friends often. Hanzo did not respond casually, like it was a habit, or a gesture he used with friends. Hanzo flinched, visibly. The fist made in jest stopped short of his skin and hung there, suspended by a string of remembrance of place. Agent McCree seemed to come back into the situation all at once, stepping away from the kinkiller quickly and looking away. Hanzo felt shame boil deep in his gut, frothing up to set his face on fire. Turning away, McCree lowered his head and started walking towards yet another hidden, sliding door.

"I'm sweatin' like a pig. Better hit the showers before supper's ready, so c'mon." The man said in a quiet voice, not looking back at Hanzo as he lead the way to the training rooms men's showers.

The showers were old and rusted, with only a few still working with plumbing. Hanzo chose the one farthest away from the cowboy and tensely showered. He could swear he felt eyes burning into the back of his skull at times. At one point he glanced back and caught Agent McCree outright staring at him.

"How the fuck'd you lose your legs?" Was a question Hanzo was not prepared for. He tensed momentarily before forcing himself to relax, aware the cowboy could see his every muscle as they were very, very naked. All at once he was aware of the thick, corded scars that wrapped around where his knees should be but weren't. He felt the ragged scars that crossed further up, revealing some of the inner mechanics and where his prosthetics melded into skin and bone. "Must've been pretty bad, 'siderin' they ended up like that," McCree continued, oblivious to Hanzo's spiralling thoughts. "I lost my arm in a 'splosion, the one back at the old headquarters."

Hanzo pulled his thoughts back from his hideous legs to focus on answering Agent McCree. A truth, supported and diluted by a few lies, should be enough to dissuade the proddings of the curious cowboy.

"They were removed to make room for better models," Hanzo said simply, trying to keep images of his father and uncle, unmoving and emotionless, restraining and cutting, slashing and correcting, out of his head. "I put up a fight, at first. That's 'how the fuck I lost my legs.'"

His tone must have put Agent McCree off, as he shut up and turned around. Not long after they concluded their border-line cold showers and continued off to redress and then attend dinner. Dinner was another boring affair with only snippets of conversation. Nothing was as interesting as the conversation that ended lunch, and Hanzo found himself zoning out more than he listened in. When dinner concluded so did his tense, half-friendly half-enemy time with Agent McCree. His next guard stuck with him was not Genji, much to Hanzo's surprise. In fact, Hanzo hadn't seen Genji all day. Instead Hanzo was stuck with a loud, overbearing, slightly angry seeming german man. Who was also huge.

Hanzo recognized him from old overwatch posters, he looked the same, if much older. He talked a lot. That was how Hanzo learned where Genji was. He was, apparently, out on a short-staffed mission to go collect new recruits and bring them back to the base. One of the said new members was, as Agent Reinhardt said, Genji's new boyfriend. Hanzo started zoning the large man out at the mention of Genji and his love life. It reminded him of days gone by, years of collecting Genji from strangers houses and beds, cleaning the cum off his lips and legs when he was too drunk or drugged to do so himself. It was not a fun task. Hanzo had always been the one to take the punishment for Genji's antics. Genji was his ward, afterall. Hanzo was ultimately responsible for whatever, or whoever, he got into.

The time for sleep came soon enough, and Hanzo was escorted back to his borrowed quarters. It brought crashing back the events of that afternoon, of the swirling blackness and haunting, deep, scratching laughter. Thinking back on it he began to doubt it's realness. Hanzo had sat down, afterall, it could very likely have been a dream. Through internalized reassurances and the knowledge of a very, very, very buff man just outside his door convinced him eventually to calm down and enter the room normally. The door slid shut behind him with a hiss of air, leaving him alone in the shadows cast by the moon through his closed window.


End file.
